Each year, significant time and money are lost due to commercial aircraft accidents and incidents during ground operations, of which significant portions occur during maneuvers on the taxiways and aprons. During ground operations, aircraft share the taxiways and aprons with other aircraft, fuel vehicles, baggage carrying trains, mobile stairways, and many other objects. Should an aircraft collide with any of such objects, the aircraft and the object with which it collided both would require repair and recertification asserting its capability of operation. Costs associated with such repair and recertification, as well as lost opportunity costs associated with the aircraft and the object with which it collided can be expensive.
There are numerous phases of ground operations that occur for aircraft during arrival to and departure from an airport. The taxi-in (TXI) and taxi-out (TXO) phases, for example, require the aircraft to move between the runway and terminal gates. During powered aircraft ground procedures, the flight crew is located in a central cockpit where they are fairly well positioned to observe objects that are directly in front of the cabin of the aircraft, although forward object distance determination can still be challenging. Knowing what is going on near the aircraft wingtips can be even a greater challenge. The aircraft's wings extend laterally from the cabin in both directions and are typically situated well behind the cockpit, and for many aircraft they extend a great distance from the cabin and are thus out of the field of view of the cabin. Additionally, some commercial planes have engines that hang below the wings of the aircraft. During taxi maneuvers, the wingtips and engine nacelles can be susceptible to obstacle collision. Thus, while under aircraft power, the crew must keep eyes forward, while also protecting aircraft assets that are behind them. This often is a formidable task.
Furthermore, knowing that the host aircraft, as a whole, is on an imminent collision path might not be enough information for the crew to execute a safe maneuver. Due to the large size of commercial aircraft and the lack of agile maneuverability, it would be useful to understand what part of the aircraft is at risk of collision. The primary collision points of an aircraft are the wingtips, tail components and nacelles, but other parts of the aircraft can get impacted as well.